The Zoologist— September, 1868. 1351 



notices are no longer confined to the limited area of the British 

 islands : they are derived from widely-separated localities ; Ireland 

 England, Mauritius, Rodriguez, New Zealand, Bourbon, Behring's' 

 Straits, Newfoundland and Phillip Island. 



■1. The Irish Elk died about the year 1070. The Irish elk is a 

 misnomer : this gigantic deer was one of the platycerine division of the 

 genus Cervus, and had little to do with the elk, as we now understand 

 that animal. In the Preface to the 'Zoologist' for 1846 will be found 

 a tolerably complete history of this remarkable animal : from this it 

 appears that the females were killed as food for man by the blow of a 

 pole-axe in the forehead, just as our butchers kill bullocks at the 

 present day ; there is, moreover, sufficient evidence of the females 

 being domesticated and milked as our milch kine ; they are also sup- 

 posed to have been used as beasts of burthen. There is no evidence 

 of the males being slaughtered. The bones are found iu the greatest 

 abundance in the Irish bogs, and are so recent, or so well preserved 

 by the antiseptic properties of the peat, that very tolerable soup has' 

 been made from them, and the marrow has been found to blaze like a 

 candle. This enormous deer stood at least seven feet high at the 

 shoulder; and the horns extended more than eleven feet from tip to 

 tip : he probably became extinct at the period of the Homan invasion 

 but we are without the slightest evidence as to the people that de- 

 stroyed so noble an animal. We have evidence of departed men far 

 superior to the Kelt, but we scarcely know how to designate them • it 

 is more than probable that the half-mythical race who built the round 

 towers were also the destroyers of the Irish deer. It is, however, in 

 vain we speculate whether foreign invaders or native bears and 

 wolves, had this task of destruction assigned to them. Kelts were 

 unequal to the task, and Saxons had not landed. 



2. Wild Cattle as a species died about the year 70. Enormous wild 

 cattle, described by some authors as " boves sylvestres," and by Csssar 

 as " Uri," infested London at the period of the Roman invasion, indeed 

 five distinct wild species of the genus Taurus then inhabited Europe 

 Every child will recollect the story of Guy Earl of Warwick and the' 

 dun cow : there is not the slightest reason for believing the story a 

 romance. In a Swedish museum and in the British Museum are skulls 

 of this great bull (Bos pHmigenim of Owen) that indicate a beast at 

 least twelve feet long and high in proportion ; indeed such an animal 

 as would abundantly answer the description of the Uri of Hercynian 

 forests given by Caesar in the following words:— "These Uri are little 



